Fashion Zombies!

Fashion is undoubtedly a huge aspect in our cultural and everyday lives, seeing as how we can’t go a day without selecting something to wear out of our closets, or passing by a television displaying commercials with the new styles of the season. Our fashion sense can be affected by the shows we choose to view or what we see in the media, which is why “fashion forensics” is a main topic in our finals weeks.

Along with major topics comes rebellious opinions and controversy. Here’s just one example critiquing the mainstream fashion world (mostly of teenagers) through a music video by the Aquabats:

There are numerous videos like this by many different musical artists portraying the same sort of message. Can you find any other examples? It’s often odd when popular punk bands criticize the fashion of youths, when it’s their image that is often being copied. Or they took parts of their style from differing people. Nobody really “owns” a style. The Aquabats are a little different, seeing as no one really goes around wearing skin tight superhero outfits. This was actually one of their more controversial songs…I mean in comparison to songs such as “Magic Chicken” and “Captain Hampton and the Midget Pirates.”

Also, let’s talk about the form and effectiveness of the video. Okay, sure it’s some wacky music video made by some punk/ska band, but I think we’ve been straying far from the more technical concepts of this course. I guess they used a cheaper format, giving that cheesy home video affect for the streets scenes and switching to cheesy raindrop graphics and rectangular boxes reminiscent of the Brady Bunch or something. The scene where the fashion zombies are staggering after the aquabats reminds me of that one classic shot someone posted from Night of the Living Dead. It was effectively cheesy I suppose, which was probably their aim. I didn’t care for it much though. What do you guys think?